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[Locriani]

PHP5 is a lot better than PHP4 was.  The security problems are easily avoided if you turn off certain features like magic quotes(something they've been trying hard to depreciate for years and years.)  If you want to write in a language nobody but you will understand, more power to you but, yeah -- you'll likely be the sole maintainers, forever.

Number of PHP  main functions: 3079
That's maintainable code right there. Example:

Code: [Select]

strstr, strchr, stristr, strpos, strrchr, stripos, mb_strpos, mb_strrpos, strrpos, strripos, substr
I'll leave it to you to discover which of those string matching functions are buggy and listed as 'will not be fixed' by the PHP team. (Hint: it's all of them, each with different issues)

Ruby is a programming language, Ruby on Rails is a web application framework that supports rapid application development.  Saying nobody but us understands it is a complete invention - it's used for Twitter, Github, Hulu, MTV, Penny Arcade, Suse Linux Studio, Kongregate, and portions of Google Analytics for example.

[Footkerchief]

Rails and Ruby are pretty rad.  I wish y'all the best of luck.

[Draco18s]

Ruby is a programming language, Ruby on Rails is a web application framework that supports rapid application development.

Which is about all I know.  They don't teach it in college.

[Corona688]

Number of PHP  main functions: 3079

Heh.  Sounds impressive until you realize the vast, vast majority of them are tiny.

strstr

already fixed.

strchr

strchr == strstr, so fixed.

stristr

also fixed

strpos

Not a bug, you need to understand the return type

strrchr

likewise

stripos

likewise

mb_strpos, mb_strrpos, strrpos, strripos, substr

etc etc etc.  Try using the language instead of just reading hateposts on it.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Just a note for those that absolutely HAVE to use IE.
http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/

Google has a plugin that 'fixes' IE.

But still, the people who use IE would have to know about it and download it. If they use IE, what are the chances they will spontaneously learn this just because our Wiki says "What you use is crap. Go away!"

While IE may have the overwhelming market share. I'd say, more often than not, Someone who's playing, or trying to play DF is going to know how terrible IE is.

Calhoun, I agree with you. People who actively play Dwarf Fortress probably have thrown IE away. However, people still follow a chain of links that originate from "Wow that sounds cool" to viewing the Ascii wonder that is Dwarf Fortress. Some of these will be heathenistic IE users. Heck, some of our own members might sacrifice apples to their Microsoft god out of sight of us civilized folk. The thing is, if we crucify these poor misguided people, we are stuck to our population growing only from internal efforts. We need them Migrants so we can have an effective military in our quest to take over the world! We can change their silly profession from IEuser to Foxdwarf pretty easily once they arrive in the meeting hall.

Joking aside, our wiki appears to already support these IE features. This is talk about the plan to replace the current Wiki for something a little more smooth. I don't know if there was any information gathering devices embedded into our wiki, but I'm willing to bet that the pageviews on it would still be 25% IE at least. What percentage of IE users are we going to chop out due to antiquated versions? That's an important fact to determine, since IE users are the most likely to be new to Dwarf Fortress, and those are the ones we want to learn about Dwarf Fortress and use the Wiki.

If you want to commit to that support, feel free to contribute to the project.  It is unreasonable and impossible to expect me to contribute that support, so assuming it does not render properly in IE, then you'll have a broken page.

As to if it is unreasonable and impossible to expect you to contribute that support, the only person I expect to contribute that support is the one who decides that what we have that works (as buggy and inefficient as it is) needs to be replaced. If that happens to be you, then yes, I expect you to contribute that support.
As to if I'm going to develop it, no I won't. My talents don't rest anywhere near that aspect. My talents also do not rest in convincing people to ignore existing hurdles and see what things are. I am not a programmer, and my communication skills are so horrible that I'm likely to convince a band of villagers to burn me at the stake while only asking for a simple cup of water. What I can do is look at things and place myself in the shoes of someone else. I can see the world from many different perspectives. I am using my skills, pathetic as they are, to warn you of a problem that is coming, and try to convince you to consider a different solution. One that ensures the greatest number of new people have access, so that the growth rate of people who play dwarf fortress remains large.

[Footkerchief]

But still, the people who use IE would have to know about it and download it. If they use IE, what are the chances they will spontaneously learn this just because our Wiki says "What you use is crap. Go away!"

So detect IE users and tell them about it.

[Kogan Loloklam]

So detect IE users and tell them about it.

Any good drug dealer knows you hook them on the drugs before you add obstacles into it.

[Footkerchief]

It probably should be reiterated that they're not saying "no IE support ever," they're saying "not until after v1."

[Kogan Loloklam]

It probably should be reiterated that they're not saying "no IE support ever," they're saying "not until after v1."

Because editing is magic!

[NoahTheDuke]

Jesus, guys. What's with the hate? Some dudes are trying to do a good thing, and you're valiantly fighting them off, desperate to keep the status quo.

How does your bitching and shouting help in any way?

Noah

[Scarpa]

Are there even any planned features that will break in IE?

Out of curiosity, how much load is there on the wiki now and what kind of hardware hosts it?

[Mason11987]

A few things I'd like to see addressed before we plan changing the location of the wiki:

How many users of the wiki are using a browser that we expect won't work in the next version.

If this is a non-negligable amount (and I expect it is) then why wouldn't we plan out some support for these users BEFORE we make the transition?

Finally.  I suggest we put some easily viewable link on the main page suggesting users switch to a better browswer, then analyze the difference this makes in the number of users with particular browsers.

[Locriani]

stuff

I won't get any further into this about this.  Many of the bugs you listed as fixed are not actually fixed in the mainline vendor distributions of operating systems, and I have, in fact, used PHP.  I paid my way through late high school / early college exclusively programming in PHP.   It is not suitable for this project; stop posting about how you love the language in this thread; we don't care.

A few things I'd like to see addressed before we plan changing the location of the wiki:

How many users of the wiki are using a browser that we expect won't work in the next version.

If this is a non-negligable amount (and I expect it is) then why wouldn't we plan out some support for these users BEFORE we make the transition?

Finally.  I suggest we put some easily viewable link on the main page suggesting users switch to a better browswer, then analyze the difference this makes in the number of users with particular browsers.

I'm working on an analytics dump right now, that's actually probably good information.

Are there even any planned features that will break in IE?

Out of curiosity, how much load is there on the wiki now and what kind of hardware hosts it?

Currently, the biggest planned that break in IE involve HTML5 support for media and differences views.  As we get further along, this information will be more complete.

The wiki is currently hosted on 3 (2) linodes - one is a common nginx proxy frontend that's actually used for a number of my company's sites - this load is negligible and could easily be hosted on any existing host.  the second is the Apache backend for the wiki, and the third is a database / memcached server exclusively used by the wiki.

It probably should be reiterated that they're not saying "no IE support ever," they're saying "not until after v1."

Because editing is magic!

I've fixed this in the OP.

[Locriani]

Analytics information of dwarf fortress wiki visitors (since I began collecting statistics, about 6 months ago):

Position	Browser	Unique Visitors	Percentage of Visitors
1	Firefox	282,288	64.49%
2	Chrome	56,204	12.84%
3	Safari	41,678	9.52%
4	Internet Explorer	28,591	6.53%
5	Opera	22,312	5.10%
6	Playstation 3	4,573	1.04%
7	All others	2,054	0.48%

Why are we worried about IE support, again?

[edit]Someone raised this question on IRC.  No, dwarf fortress probably does not have this many unique players - the wiki is slashdotted and redditted regularly (approximately once per week).  This pushes the unique visitors out of proportion (amusingly, the majority of slashdotters who visit use IE, and the majority of redditers use FF)

[Footkerchief]

Heehee, almost as many on Opera as on IE.